Category: Internet

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Sat Mar 9 2024 – Running AI at home on a Raspberry Pi

Craigs presentation notes are here. http://www.makikiweb.com/Pi/ai_on_the_pi.html

8:45-9:00a Coffee & Conversation
9:00a Presentation

PLEASE NOTE: earlier time for this meeting. There is another group who will be using the room at 10:45a.

AI is not just for the big guys any longer. It is possible to run an Artificial Intelligence program on your Pi 4 or Pi 5. In this presentation, we’ll learn about how to run an several AI models on the Pi, the advantages and disadvantages of each.

We’ll open the floor to ask the AI questions (via a web interface on the local network), so bring a laptop, all over IPv6!

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat Jan 13 2024 – Home git server & workflow

Happy 2024!

Mark will share how to create a home git server (take that github!) and the workflow with it.

Basic Git Home “Remote” Server Using

SSH With Gitolite

Mark G.
January 13, 2024

An installation and configuration of a source code control system (SCCS).
The SCCS uses the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, the Git version control
system (VCS), and a software package named Gitolite. A user of the system provides a public key that is tied to configured identities for the purposes of access control to git repositories. The repositories configured on this server are intended to be used as remotes, in terms of how git defines a remote.
This demonstration was hosted on a FreeBSD 13.x operating system running on a raspberry pi 4.

git-homeDownload
gitignore_globalDownload

We are back at Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Nov 11 2023 – Intro to NextCloud on a Pi

Why just run your own video conferencing server, when you can simultaneously run that AND mail, calendaring, contacts, calls, IM, file sharing, remote backup, and a web-based office suite, all in one intimidating package. Get your own thrift-store Google G Suite going with the open source Nextcloud platform on a tiny Raspberry Pi! Great for the privacy-conscious, the independent, and masochists. We’ll do it the hard way and make configuring Jitsi look like recess at kindergarten (and then do it the easy way). Warning: the hard way will race through dependencies including Apache, PHP, MySQL/MariaDB and openSSL, so expect some mild suffering.

Richard’s Blog here:

Actual process including configuring a web server and database and installing from a source tarball:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi_22.html –

here are the pdfs

Kosmokaryote_-TechDownload

and here


Much briefer post using nextcloudpi via docker from my notes, as originally demoed:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi.html

Kosmokaryote_-Tech2Download

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

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Sat. May 14, 2022 – SSH Tricks and Tips

In this presentation, we’ll take a look at how the secure shell
(SSH) protocol can be used to to tunnel many different types of network traffic. We’ll cover X Window forwarding, local port forwarding (think VNC), and how to use its support for the SOCKS
protocol.

Marks’s presention notes are here.

https://www.palaceofretention.ca/vp/sshtunnels.pdf

This meeting will be virtual only. Please do not go to Q College as no one will be there. Click the link below and join us online. Thank you.

(QCollege has welcomed us back to meet in-person. We thank them for their support. Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC)

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation (virtual)
10a Presentation

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

We will be holding a Hybrid meeting (Jitsi).

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Postponed – Projects and Challenges

Due to the current situation @ March 14, 2020, in-person meetings have been suspended until further notice. Please do join us on Slack or at our online learning sessions using Jitsi. Write to hello at vicpimakers.ca for invitations and information.

Q-CollegeSuite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC – 10am

1) Hack Challenge, by George
Modify a window alarm to be a useful or entertaining device. Window alarms to be supplied free March 14th, one per attendee.

2) Hack Challenge, by Deid
New “Christmas Light” patterns

3) … bring projects that you want to share or need help with… If you like, email a description to be added to this page.

It is fun to repurpose battery powered consumer products.  For instance, here is a Leak Detector made from a window alarm.  The article includes the window alarm schematic.  

And George made a bike theft deterrent alarm with remote radio alerting from the same window alarm.

In normal operation, the window alarm senses separation from its external magnet via its internal reed switch and feeds its piezo disk with an oscillation.  The window alarm runs on 3 button cells and draws no current when the reed switch is open. There is also a slide switch to enable/disable the alarm.

Here is a photo of the circuit board:  The OUT signal from the 8 pin oscillator chip is a 10V DC wave, pumped up by the inductor from 5 volts. A voltage divider can be added to lower this chip output signal to less than 5v to feed another device.    

Or the piezo can be used as a microphone, providing about 100mv into a very high impedance input

In May we can show what we achieved.

New “Christmas Light” patterns

Deid successfully connected a 50 light string of addressable LEDs to an ESP8266 to cause the lights to light and change colour and move and …

Deid created the following patterns:

  • Primary
  • Random
  • Web Safe
  • Follow
  • Lead
  • Random On ***
  • All On
  • All Off
  • Rainbow
  • Moving
  • Colour
  • Christmas
  • Rainbow Group
  • Dual Colour ***
    *** Shown in the images

The ESP8266 C code to do this can be found here.  Deid makes no representation that the existing code is good.  In fact he knows some of it is not. Feel free to fix.

The challenge is to add more patterns and the code to implement the patterns.  If you send Deid the code he will load and try the code. Unless someone comes up with a better way for folks to test remotely.


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Thur Feb 27, 2020 – NetSig – Defending with IP Tables/bpf

netsigbd

A Special Interest Group focused on computer networking. Building networks for Today and Tomorrow!
Half of the meeting is education, or presentation. Half is sharing, and problem solving.
Bring a laptop with Wireshark installed: We’ll be running a hands on workshop using iptables/ip6tables/bpf (BSD Packet Filter)
Thursday, February 20, 2020
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Q-CollegeSuite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC

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Thursday, Jan 23, 2020 – NetSig

netsig image

A Special Interest Group focused on computer networking. Building networks for Today and Tomorrow!

Half of the meeting is education, or presentation. Half is sharing, and problem solving.

Bring a laptop with Wireshark installed: We’ll look into scanning networks with NMAP, and what info you can glean from it.

Thursday, January 23, 2020
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC

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NetSig

net sig

First Meeting – Thursday, July 25, 2019
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM 
Q-College · Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC

Bring a laptop with Wireshark (download) installed: 
We’ll be covering the basics of packet capture, and seeing what is actually on your network. More Wireshark: pad

What is NetSig?

A Special Interest Group focused on computer networking.
Building networks for Today and Tomorrow!

1.5 hours on a weekday evening
Half of the meeting is education or presentation. 
Half is sharing, and problem-solving.

A gathering of like-minded persons.
Understand and solve some of the challenges in networking today.
Are you IPv6 ready? 
Help Victoria become a leader, rather than a follower in Networking.

Topics

Education | Traffic analysis: ELK stack and Packet Beat | Virtualized Networking in Cloud containers | IPv6 | Routing |

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March 23, 2019 Let’s Encrypt

“Let’s Encrypt” is a free, public usable Certificate Authority that makes encrypting your web server’s http traffic easy. All you need to know about setup up a Raspberry Pi to use Let’s Encrypt will be presented by Mark G.

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

Download: Using Let’s Encrypt As A Certificate Authority on a Raspberry Pi

letsencryptpresentation


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February 23, 2019 – Linux Containers on the Pi: A Server Farm in the Palm of your hand

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

Another container technology which can also run on SBCs is Linux Containers (LXC/LXD). Each LXC Container appears to have its own network stack. And therefore is much more flexible than Docker.

We’ll run 20 webservers all with individual addresses, all listening on port 80, on the Pi, something that can’t be done with Docker in its NAT-constrained world.

See Craig’s documentation here.

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November 24, 2018 – Docker and a webserver on rpi

Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)

10:00am
docker logo

 

Docker is a computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization, also known as “containerization”. A Container is a lightweight application component including all the required elements (libraries, config, etc). Containers can be quickly started up without polluting your file system with libraries, and config files, and easily upgraded with one command.

In this presentation, we’ll install docker on the Pi, and get nginx webserver up and running in a container.  The presentation material can be found here.

Docker Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software)

 

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May 12, 2018 – Node-red and MicroPython esp8266 sensing

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

A Double-header:

Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.

It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

Deid will connect his ESP8266 to nodeRed and show us how easy it is to put sensors online.

See the document here.

AND Mike will present MicroPython on the ESP8266. The presentation will share the Micropython breakthru that allows a $4 WiFi-enabled microprocessor to run a good portion of the Python standard library. It’s really quite amazing to have the Python REPL and filesystem built right into a microcontroller.

See this document here.

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March 24, 2018 – Jupyter & Python

10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC

The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text.

With the success of data science and big data analytics in the last decade, Python has emerged as a major language for data analytics. In 2014, Project Jupyter started as interactive, browser-based platform for data analysis and visualization in Python. Today, Jupyter is a widely adopted framework in industry and academia and has spawned many further applications. I will introduce the Jupyter Universe and discuss Jupyter’s advantages and its shortcomings. Together we will walk through a few of its various capabilities and extensions with Jupyter notebooks available at https://github.com/chritter/Talks/tree/master/VicPiMakers.

Finally I will discuss and demonstrate the rising star of the Jupyter project, Jupyter Lab.

Also, see notes here: http://vicpimakers.ca/tutorials/python-tutorial/the-jupyter-notebook/